Black Sheep

by Georgette Heyer

  'Very likely,' Abby returned. 'So did I, when I was laid up for a sennight with the influenza, last year!'

  Balked of her wish to allay anxiety by her superior knowledge and commonsense, Mrs Grimston threw in a doubler. 'Yes, Miss Abby, and if it is the influenza, it's to be hoped Miss Selina hasn't taken it from her!'

  'Oh, Grimston, you – you wretch !' Abby exclaimed ruefully. 'If she has, we shall be in the suds! Well! all my dependence is upon you!'

  Mollified by this tribute, Mrs Grimston relented, and said, as she accompanied Abby to the sickroom: 'And so I should hope, ma'am! They say that there's a lot of this influenza going about, so I daresay Miss Fanny hasn't taken anything worse. But you know what she is, Miss Abby, and if you'll take my advice, you'll send for the doctor!'

  Abby did indeed know what Miss Fanny was, and she gave a ready consent to the footboy's being sent off immediately on this errand. Fanny, though rarely ill, was a bad patient. If any seasonal ailment, or epidemic disease, attacked her, it invariably did so with unprecedented violence. None of her schoolfriends had been as full of the measles as she had been; none had whooped more distressingly; or had been more tormented by the mumps; so it came as no surprise to Abby, upon entering a room redolent with the fumes of burning pastilles, to find her in a high fever, and complaining in a miserable wail that she was hot, uncomfortable, aching in every limb, and hardly able to lift her eyelids.

  'Poor Fanny!' Abby said softly, lifting the folded handkerchief from her brow, and soaking it afresh with vinegar. 'There! is that better? Don't cry, my pet! Dr Rowton is coming to see you, and he will soon make you more comfortable.'

  'I don't want him! I'm not ill! I'm not, I'm not! I want to get up! I must get up!'

  'To be sure, and so you shall, just as soon as you feel more the thing,' Abby said soothingly.

  'I do feel the thing! It's only that my head hurts me, and I can't hold my eyes open, and everything aches all over me!' wept the sufferer. 'Oh, Abby, please make me better quickly!'

  'Yes, darling, of course I will.'

  This assurance seemed to calm Fanny. She lay still for a while, dropping into an uneasy doze; but within a very few minutes she became restless again, insisting that she was better, trying to get up, and bursting into tears when Abby gently pressed her back on to her pillows.

  Having had considerable experience of her mercurial temperament, and knowing that whenever she was condemned to lie in bed it took much to persuade her that her ills would not be instantly alleviated by her getting up, and going for a walk, Abby set no particular store by her agitation. Leaving Mrs Grimston to sit with her, she withdrew, to dress, and – when fortified by breakfast – to break the news to Selina.

  She found that Fardle, Selina's maid, had been before her, carrying such an unpromising account of Fanny's condition that Selina's appetite had been destroyed. When Abby came into her room, she was sitting up in bed, eating pieces of toast dipped in weak tea: a melancholy diet to which it was her custom to resort in times of stress. She greeted her sister with a moan, and a demand to be told whether the doctor had been sent for.

  'Yes, dear, an hour ago! I daresay he will be here directly,' replied Abby cheerfully. 'Not that I think there is much to be done for her, but I hope he may be able to make her more comfortable at least. Grimston gave her a fever powder at seven o'clock but it hasn't answered, so I have told her not to repeat it.'

  'No, no, don't let Grimston quack her! Oh, Abby, if she should be beginning in the smallpox – !' uttered Selina, staring fearfully at her.

  'Beginning in the smallpox?' echoed Abby, in astonishment. 'Good God, no! How can you be so absurd, Selina? Why, surely you haven't forgotten that Dr Rowton persuaded us all to be inoculated last year? Besides, where could she have contracted it? There are no cases of it in Bath that I've heard of !'

  'No, dear, very likely not, but one never knows, and Fardle has been telling me –'

  'Fardle!' exclaimed Abby. 'I might have guessed as much! I am perfectly sure that she has a sister, or an aunt, or a cousin, who nearly died in the smallpox, and that her symptoms precisely resembled Fanny's, for we've never yet had an illness in this household, but what one of Fardle's relations had had it too, only far worse! Pray don't fly into a fuss, dear! I shall own myself surprised if Dr Rowton finds Fanny to be suffering from anything more serious than influenza.'

  'Oh, my love, why didn't you send for Dr Dent? I have no great opinion of Rowton, though an excellent man in his way, of course, but not clever! You know how well Dr Dent understood my case when I had influenza!'

  'Yes, dear, but I was persuaded you would wish me to send for Rowton, because he is familiar with her constitution,' said Abby diplomatically. 'Do you mean to drive into town this morning? Will you buy a bottle of lavender-water, if you please?'

  'Fardle must procure it,' said Selina, in a failing voice. 'I shall rest quietly in bed this morning, for I have already felt a spasm, and heaven forbid I should be ill at this moment! Such a dreadful shock to be roused with such news! Yes, and she must bring me some camphor, for I don't believe there is any in the house, and you know how susceptible I am to colds and influenza!'

  Abby agreed to this, but ventured to suggest that not the most susceptible person would be very likely to contract influenza twice within the space of a month.

  'No, dearest,' replied Selina, directing a look of patient reproach at her. 'I daresay an ordinary person might not, but, alas, I have never enjoyed high health, and as for not contracting influenza twice in a month, I had three epidemic colds last winter, one after another! And I recall that you said exactly the same when you came home from Lady Trevisian's card-party, sneezing and snuffling, and I begged you not to come near me, but to go up to your bed immediately! You said I could not catch it from you, because I had not been out of my bed above a sennight! But I did!'

  Abby begged pardon, kissed her cheek, and left her to the enjoyment of her mild triumph.

  In the sickroom, she found Fanny tossing restlessly, and alternately expressing her determination to get up, and complaining of the various aches and pains which assailed her. Her pulse was rapid, and her skin very hot and dry, and it was obvious that her fever was mounting.

  Mrs Grimston, drawing Abby out of the room, said that if anyone were to ask her she would feel herself impelled to say that they were regularly in for it. 'As nasty an attack as any I've nursed her through!' she said. 'Well, I'm sure it's not to be wondered at, the way she's been gallivanting to parties all over, and her no more than a baby! Burnt to the socket, that's what she is, Miss Abby, and so full of crotchets and nonsense as is enough to put one quite out of patience! First she must get up, and the moment my back's turned so she did! Only that turned her so dizzy she was glad enough to be put back into bed. Then she began to cry, but I soon put a stop to that, ma'am, for we don't want her to get into one of her ways, for, as I told her, that won't make her feel better! Then nothing will do for her but what she must speak to Betty about mending a frill on her blue muslin. "There'll be time enough for that, Miss Fanny," I said, "and no need to bring Betty into the room to take the influenza, for I'll speak to her about it myself." '

  The arrival of Dr Rowton brought this monologue to a close. He was a sensible-looking man, with a latent twinkle in his eye, but it was not difficult to see why Selina thought poorly of him. He had cheerful, matter-of-fact manners, and had been known to tell ladies in failing health that their mysterious ailments arose from want of occupation, or from thinking too much about themselves. He said, as he shook hands with Abby: 'And how is Miss Wendover? I hear she has my old friend, Dent, attending her now. I thought it wouldn't be long before she gave poor Ockley the go-by: not her style at all!'

  He did not take a very serious view of Fanny's case; but when he left her he told Abby that she would probably be laid up for some little time. 'Oh, yes, it's influenza right enough,' he said. 'It's running very much about, you know, and unusually virulent. A pity Fanny should have cau
ght it. Now, had it been you, Miss Abby, I should have said you'd be as bobbish as ever in a week but we both know what Fanny is, don't we? Always the way with girls of her cut! You'll have to keep her quiet – as quiet as you can! I was used to call her Miss Quicksilver, when she was a child, and she hasn't altered much. I'll send my man round with some medicine for her to take, and we'll see how she goes on tomorrow.'

  He was a favourite of Fanny's, ranking amongst her oldest friends, and Abby had hoped that his visit would do her good. She did indeed manage to conjure up a wan smile, when he walked up to the bedside, saying: 'Well, Miss Quicksilver, and pray what's all this?' but the voice in which she responded: 'Oh, dear Dr "Wowton", make me well again quickly!' was very lachrymose; and when he told her, in his blunt way that she would certainly not be able to get up that day, or for several days, she burst into tears.

  When Abby returned to the sickroom, however, she seemed to be resigned to her fate, and to be inclined to sleep.

  She did drop off into an uneasy doze from time to time, but her dreams were haunted by Stacy, either waiting for hour upon hour in Sydney Gardens, or accusing her of being false to him; and more than once she woke with tears on her cheeks, and a jumble of words on her feverish lips.

  She retained no very clear memory of what had happened at the previous night's party, but she did remember that she had promised to meet Stacy, and that he had been angry with her for not talking to him. He had said that he could see she didn't love him, and now he would be sure of it. She had racked her brains to hit upon some way of conveying a message to him, but Abby and Nurse were in league against her; they would not even let her see Betty Conner, who could have done it for her. Perhaps he would think that she had stayed away on purpose, to show him that she didn't want to run off with him after all. Perhaps he would leave Bath, as he had threatened to do, and she would never see him again, never be able to tell him that it hadn't been her fault, or that she did love him, and wasn't afraid to elope with him to Scotland.

  These agitating reflections did nothing to improve her con dition; and as her fever mounted they became even more lurid, until they included visions of her own death-bed, and Stacy's remorse at having so misjudged her. But towards evening Dr Rowton's paregoric medicine began to take effect, and she grew calmer, emerging from the state of semi-delirium which had kept Abby hovering on the verge of sending a second, and far more urgent, summons to the doctor. She felt so ill, and so much exhausted, that she no longer wanted to get up, or even to exert herself sufficiently to try once more to think how she might send a message to Stacy. It must be too late by now, she thought apathetically. Her whole life was ruined, but it didn't seem to matter nearly as much as her aching body, and the stabbing pain in her temple, and her terrible thirstiness. When Abby raised her, she leaned her head gratefully on Abby's shoulder, murmuring her name.

  'Yes, my darling, I'm here,' Abby said tenderly. 'Nurse is going to shake up your pillows while you have a cool drink of lemonade. There, is that better?'

  'Oh, yes!' she sighed, her thirst for the moment assuaged. She opened her eyes, and they fell on a big bowl of flowers. 'Oh!' she breathed.

  'Looking at your beautiful flowers?' Abby said, laying her gently down again. 'Oliver and Lavinia brought them, when they came to enquire how you did. They left their love to you, and were so sorry to hear that you're so poorly. Go to sleep again now, darling: I won't leave you.'

  The spark of hope that had flickered in Fanny's breast died, but as she lay dreamily looking at the flowers it occurred to her that if the Grayshotts knew that she was ill they would be very likely to tell other people, and so, perhaps, the news would reach Stacy's ears, and he would know why she had broken her word to him. With a deep sigh of relief, she turned her head on the pillow, snuggling her cheek into it, and drifted back into sleep.

  Thirteen

  It was not long before the news reached Stacy Calverleigh, but when it did it brought no relief to his anxieties, which were rapidly becoming acute. He had not supposed, when he kicked his heels in the Sydney Gardens, that Fanny had failed him from intention, nor did it occur to him that she might be ill. Not being endowed with the perception which distinguished Mr Oliver Grayshott, he had failed to notice her flushed cheeks and heavy eyes, and had ascribed the headache of which she had complained to a tiresome fit of missishness. The likeliest explanation that presented itself to him was that she had been prevented from keeping her assignation by the vigilance of her aunt. It had at first exasperated him; but, upon reflection, he had come to the conclusion that the frustration of her plan might well prove to be all that was needed to cause such a wilful, headstrong girl as Fanny to throw herself into his arms in a fury of indignation. Confident that she must be pantingly eager to tell him why she had been unable to meet him, and equally eager to escape from her shackles, he paraded the Pump Room on the following morning; and, when neither she nor Miss Wendover put in an appearance, wasted considerable time in taking a look-in at the libraries, strolling up such fashionable streets as Fanny would be most likely to visit on a shopping expedition, and loitering interminably in Queen's Square. No balls or concerts took place at the Assembly Rooms on Fridays, and as he had received no invitation to any private party it was not until Saturday that he learned of Fanny's indisposition.

  It struck him with dismay. It must mean delay, even if she made a quick recovery, and delay was what he could not afford. It was not in his nature to envisage disaster. He had the true gamester's belief in his luck, and experience had encouraged him to think that when this failed him some unexpected stroke of Providence would rescue him from his predicaments. But several unpleasant communications, which not the most hardened of optimists could have failed to recognise as the precursors to writs, had reached him; and a most disquieting letter from his man of business had conveyed to him the intelligence that foreclosure on his estates was now imminent. For perhaps the first time in his life, he knew panic, and for a few wild moments entertained thoughts of a flight to the Continent. While these endured, his spirits rose: life abroad held out its attractions. A clever gamester, one who knew what time of day it was, could make a fortune if he set up a gaming establishment in any one of half a dozen cities which instantly leaped to his mind. Not Paris: no, not Paris. Now that Napoleon was marooned on St Helena Island, far too many Englishmen were to be found disporting themselves in Paris: he had as well – or as ill – set up such an establishment in London. But there were other promising cities, rather farther afield, where the chances of his being recognised by an English traveller were negligible.

  This was important. Mr Stacy Calverleigh, eyed askance by the society into which he had been born, even being obliged, since his disastrous attempt to secure an heiress, to endure more than one cut direct, bent on seducing yet a second heiress to elope with him, was not so lost to a sense of his obligations that he did not recoil from the thought of transforming himself, openly, into the proprietor of a gaming-house. He had often thought what a capital hand he would have made of it, had it been possible for him to join the company of these gentry; he had never regarded his estates as anything other than a coffer into which he could dip his hand at will; but the inculcated precepts of his breeding remained with him. There were some things a Calverleigh of Danescourt must never do; and high on the list of these prohibitions ranked the only profession at which he felt he might have excelled.

  But if one could enter it without the knowledge of those who would most contemptuously condemn him? As his fancy played with the possibilities of such a situation, his eyes brightened, and he began to picture a future rosier, and far more to his secret taste, than any that had yet presented itself to him.

  Only for a few, fleeting moments, however. To embark on such a career, it was necessary that the dibs should be in tune, and the dibs were not in tune. There was no other solution to his difficulties than a rich marriage. Marriage to Fanny was not the ideal solution, but a notice (he had already drafted it) sent to the Gaze
tte, and the Morning Post, of his marriage to the only daughter of the late Rowland Wendover Esquire, of Amberfield, in the County of Bedfordshire, would stave off his creditors, and might, at the least, make it very difficult for Mr James Wendover to repudiate the alliance.

  A visit of enquiry and condolence to Sydney Place did not strengthen this more hopeful view. He was received by the elder Miss Wendover; and although she welcomed him with rather guilty kindness, her account of her niece's illness was not encouraging. Mr Miles Calverleigh, with his dispassionate yet shrewd ability to sum up his fellow-creatures, would have appreciated it at its true value; Mr Stacy Calverleigh, absorbed in his own entity, only noticed the peculiarities of the persons with whom he came in contact when their idiosyncrasies directly affected him, and so made no allowance for the exaggerations of an elderly lady whose paramount interest lay in the ailments of herself, or of anyone attached to her. He left Sydney Place with the impression that if Fanny were not lying at death's door she was so gravely ill that it must be many weeks before she could hope to be restored to health. Miss Wendover said that she had often feared that Fanny's constitution too closely resembled her own, and embroidered this statement with some instances which, had he been listening to her with as much attention as his solicitous expression indicated, might well have led him to conclude that Fanny, for all her looks and vitality, was a frail creature, supported by her nerves, which too frequently betrayed her.